Who should we blame for drafting?
December 15th, 2009 by Nikola
Pointing fingers is easy. It is usually the first reaction. We get angry with drafting and first to blame are the ones we see drafting, second reaction is the marshals, then organizer, then the organizations… One by one we can easily blame everybody.
And everybody is to blame!
And nobody is to blame.
We are to blame as well?
At least we are trying to make Say NO To Drafting less about blame and this is why:
Drafting is a cultural issue, it is a problem in the overall culture of the sport, it is about everybody and everything.
It is no different than how driving in Istanbul is a complete nightmare, how smoking weed is normal in some teenage cultures, how taking illegal anabolics is typical of bodybuilding, how faking to fall down is typical of Italian football, how surfers talk a “certain way”, how English like their fish&chips and how they care about the Royal Family, how Americans drive huge cars, how Chinese eat with chopsticks… you get the point.
It is also same as having coffee in Lava Java in Kona, like trying to be sub 10% body fat all year round, like wearing tight clothes with super bright colors and huge logos, like mentioning Mark Allen and Kenyans 50 times in every conversation… 
It is a matter of culture, how people learned to behave within a certain group.
Marketers study it, sociologists study it, sales people love it cause it makes it easy for them to sell stuff, and those who live the culture love it cause they can be different and its obvious that they are different.
The culture of the sport of triathlon (or at least the 90% of it which is non-drafting) is a bit twisted and it includes a line which says: DRAFTING IS ACCEPTABLE.
If change is to happen we need to change this one little line to: DRAFTING IS NOT COOL.
Race owners, business people, race organizers, marshals, PROs, age groupers, spectators… we all share this cultural programming so if this one line in the program is changed we will all change and there will be less drafting.
No one is to blame, just the whole triathlon universe!
How can we change the cultural programming?
Talk talk talk talk talk against drafting so it becomes clear that drafting is NOT COOL.
We need to start a small internal triathlon cultural revolution…